Central Heat (2010) by David Dvorkin

Author:David Dvorkin [Dvorkin, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: earth, aliens, underground, moon, sun, magma, bunker, theocracy, dictatorship
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Jonathan arrived back at his apartment in Lander late at night, exhausted. He had uncovered a fair number of old records—books, original documents, computer disks and wafers—that he thought from his quick scanning of them in Montevideo would be of great value to him. Tomorrow, he would have an argument with Jerza Norgaard.

He stripped off his clothing and was about to collapse into bed when he noticed the amber message light glowing on his comm unit. He was tempted to leave it for the next day but finally decided to see what the message was.

It was a voice he didn’t recognize, a woman’s voice. The message was a request that he call a certain number as soon as he returned from the Cold. Jonathan shrugged and decided that it could certainly wait until morning. For now, sleep was more important than anything else.

*

The next morning, Jonathan had breakfast at the University cafeteria and went immediately to Jerza Norgaard’s office, hoping to score a moral victory by getting there before she did. However, she was already behind her desk, hard at work. Hard at work making life difficult for me, Jonathan told himself.

She greeted him with insincere affability and asked how he had enjoyed his stay in the Cold.

Jonathan smiled pleasantly at her. “It was exhausting and uncomfortable,” he said. “Outside, the air was so cold you could hardly breathe it, and inside it stank so much that you didn’t want to breathe it. I spent too much of my time doing unskilled work that someone else could have done at least as well and which wasted time I could have used more profitably otherwise.”

“Glad to hear it.” She maintained the false air of bonhomie. “Did you want something? I’m busy.” She emphasized the “I’m.”

“What makes you so hostile to me? Just wondering.”

For the first time, Jerza looked directly at him, instead of past his shoulder. “You’re an escapee. People like you waste our time and resources. You don’t contribute anything, and you get in the way. In my opinion, you ought to all be put together in some wilderness area and left to make it or starve. I’m not the only one who feels that way. Instead, we spend—” She broke off, looking annoyed. “I don’t have time for this. Anything else?”

Jonathan nodded. “Mm–hmm. Once before, I talked to you about a library, a special building to store the materials from the Cold. Now that I’ve been out there, I can see that we need it even more than I realized.”

Jerza said, with finality, “Photograph your rubbish. The originals can be left in the Cold, where they’re found. The temperature will preserve them.”

“And the damp will destroy them. The buildings they were housed in are all collapsed on top of them. Everything gets soaked when it’s recovered, because the ice and snow has to be melted off it. It could be dried out and stored in special buildings out there, but if we’re going to have to go to

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